In this cloud-drenched era, software vendors have evolved from code-and-ship operations into 24x7 data center operators. So they, perhaps more than any other type of organization, need DevOps methodologies to keep development and operations efforts on track, pumping out releases with blinding frequency, while keeping teams in constant sync.
For that reason, Microsoft, perhaps the world's largest software factory, takes DevOps very seriously. In a recent post[1], Ori Zohar, senior product marketing manager for Microsoft Azure, describes the urgency for his companies to build and perfect its DevOps culture. "From Office, to Azure, to Xbox we also found we needed to adapt to a new way of delivering software," he explains. "The new era of the cloud unlocks tremendous potential for innovation to meet our customers' growing demand for richer and better experiences -- while our competition is not slowing down. The need to accelerate innovation and to transform how we work is real and urgent."
Much of Microsoft's DevOps efforts have been overseen by the Microsoft One Engineering System (1ES)[2] team, a group of about 200 people who work with engineering teams across Microsoft's sprawling product lines. The 1ES team focuses on tools, processes, program offices (such as open source contributions), accessibility, security and compliance, internal consulting, "inner source (sharing source code within the organization)," and amplifying best practices across engineering teams.
The 1ES team, first formed in 2014, has been overseeing the company's Azure DevOps initiatives and proliferating the best practices developed and learned to more than 50,000 Microsoft employees. The team achieved some impressive results, not the least of which was the ability to roll out updates to its primary application suites in a matter of hours. In its public summary of DevOps activities,